The Unbroken
by LessThanNovel
Summary: Set during the time of the Old Republic, this story follows the life of a woman sold into slavery as a child in Hutt Space. It tells about the horrors that she faces, her trials and tribulations, and her eventual clawing towards freedom against seemingly insurmountable odds. This story deals with human trafficking and suicide, though there will be no sexually explicit content.


The neon lights fluttered when her feet splashed through the puddles. It was a reflection, and a murky one at best: the water here was streaked with oil and the runoff from thousands of rooftops emptying themselves from titanium gutters. When her boots hit the surface, it sent the light skittering about in the ripples, like tiny glowworms desperate to escape her feet. The girl giggled to herself, hopping from one bit of beaten road to another, finding wherever those puddles could congeal. The pathways were shattered by time and left largely unrepaired, making her stomping grounds ample.

There was little light in those streets beyond the reflections of what had been built above.

Now and then the girl glanced up at the large window beside her. She had a view of the cantina where her mother was now, sitting at a table across from a man she did not recognize. Her mother looked sickly, pale. The clothing she wore hung off of her and her eyes had sunken into her head. Now and then she quivered violently, her long, bony fingers twitching. Her lips would move as she spoke, but the girl could not hear what it was she said. Not out here.

She preferred it that way. She cherished these fleeting moments of pretend.

The man across from her mother was an odd one. Like her mother's clothing, he simply didn't seem to fit: he was well dressed, clean-shaven, bright-eyed. He had the look of money to him, and there was no money to be had, not down here in this part of Nar Shadaa. This was a network of old city alleyways that had been forgotten for the most part, abandoned by affluence as the lights rose higher and that glowing neon ascended towards the sky. It was a foundation that still had the fluttering of a pulse, and no matter how high the city soared, it would never decay. The clinging denizens that lived below would always be there to keep it alive, if not thriving, like lichen buffeted by waves.

For a moment, she thought she saw the strange man turn his head and look at her through that window. He had a kindly face and warm eyes. He smiled at her, and she smiled back at him in an uncertain way. His gaze did not linger, and when he turned back towards her mother, she saw her start to gesture in earnest, her trembling hands darting at the air as a bird might pluck at falling crumbs.

Fleetingly, the girl considered running away. A whisper in the back of her mind, the voice of an instinct cruelly born, told her that something was wrong. She could feel it, as young as she was, prickling at her, causing the hairs on the back of her neck to rise. The man looked at her again, not smiling this time but searching, as though those eyes could bore into her and root out whatever it was he might be after. The veneer of the child darting from puddle to puddle dissolved, and this time she stared back at him, frozen in place, her fingers working at the tattered ends of her sleeves and her teeth chewing the inside of her cheek.

When her mother raised a hand and beckoned her inside, she cast her eyes towards the darkness of the street and hesitated before walking through the door.

The cantina smelled of warm bodies packed too closely together. The proprietor, a green Twi'lek with broad shoulders, glanced at her from behind a counter and over the heads of a dozen men and women vying for his attention. Their collective voices drowned out whatever quieter conversations might be going throughout the rest of the room, bellowing their drink orders and reaching forward with grasping hands.

For an instant, the Twi'lek met her eyes and frowned at her, but soon enough his attention drifted elsewhere.

"Bryaal," came her mother's voice, and immediately she felt a familiar grip on her arm, hard enough to bruise. Her trembling radiated up Bryaal's shoulder, worse now.

Led to the table where the strange man still sat, her mother gestured at the bits and baubles scattered upon it. She recognized those things. She'd plucked them from refuse bins and recycling crates herself, scoured around until she found pieces of this or that which would one day form a whole. She liked to do that, like finding bits of shattered puzzles, and she'd always been good at it. Her treasures, she called them. That was what they were to her.

"How old is she?" the man asked. He was watching her again in that strange way of his, as if he would pluck her up and set her on a balance to see how she measured up.

"Six, sir. Almost seven. Young, but smart. Real smart." Her mother leaned down and pulled her close, close enough that she smelled liquor on her breath. "Show him, sweetie. Show him how smart ya are."

Bryaal stared down at the things on the table. Suddenly they didn't seem like treasure anymore. Suddenly she didn't want to touch them.

"No need to be nervous, sweetie." Her mother pushed her close enough that her stomach pressed into the table's edge. She grasped her wrists and pushed her hands at the little pieces of metal, of old, singed wiring. "Show him what ya can do."

He was still watching her with that stare, weighing her. Bryaal knew something was wrong, and knew then that she should have run instead. She should have run. She would have been alright, if she'd run.

Stretching out her fingers, she began to piece the things together. She hunched her shoulders, fixated on what she was doing, focusing on her work and nothing else. On the way she knew she could twist the wires and fit the unburnt ends together. She liked that too; to make broken things whole, liked how she could take something that had been discarded and turn it into what could be useful again. This one had been some kind of recording device, she knew. Old and battered but common enough to find. For a few precious moments, she forgot the earnest eyes watching her, and her fingers flew, fixing this piece to that, clicking metal against metal and finding where the grooves fastened again. It was halfway whole, and her eyes were gleaming, when she felt that sensation again, that voice whispering that something was amiss. Something was wrong.

She shivered and set the unfinished device down. "I dunno what t'do now," she whispered.

"Yes sh'does!" her mother exclaimed. The grip got even tighter and Bryaal protested for the first time, squirming to try and get away from her. "Sh'does know, sir, I swear it. She's real, real smart."

Gritting her teeth together, Bryaal risked a glance up at the man, trying to see his face. Her heart sank.

She'd been too late with her lie.

An aching silence stretched, and the tension was palpable enough that some of the other bodies pressing into the bar bothered to look their way. The Twi'lek behind the counter peered up again, fixing his eyes on the scene, before shaking his head disgustedly and turning away.

"We have a deal then, Ilida," the man murmured. He opened his jacket and fished into a pocket, plucking forth a small parcel that he slid towards her mother. "I'm glad that we could do business as usual, but I expect the credits next time, you understand. You still owe me, and I will collect if you do not pay."

Ilida's vice grip finally relented on Bryaal and she reached with carnal desperation towards the parcel. Ripping it open, she eyed the stims inside and licked her lips, her quivering fingers struggling to find a vein on an arm already scarred with the mark of needles. There was a barked rebuke from the proprietor: he'd have no using done in his cantina, and if she wasn't going to buy anything, she was welcome to leave.

So she did. She darted into the night, clutching the package to her chest as she went, her eyes catching on her child only for an instant before she was beyond that large window and gone from sight.

Bryaal stared after her. She did not cry.

"My name is Devcolt Sandry. You will refer to me as sir, and you will do as I say. Do you understand?"

Bryaal jerked her head and spat in his face before wheeling around and breaking into a sprint for the door.

She ran. She did not run after Ilida – her mother would not save her. Her mother could not even save herself. So she ran as fast as her legs could carry her, her fiery hair streaming out behind her in knotted waves, her eyes alight with fury and fear both. She could hear footsteps behind her, calm and unhurried, and then a voice full of iron and just a hint of anger.

"You will stop, Bryaal, or there will be consequences."

She did not stop. She did not look back. She saw the road curve ahead, and prepared to turn into it, to skid into it and silverfish into the night. She could hide for a while. She'd hide, until he went away.

Something bit into her shoulder. There was pain, great pain, and a jolt of electricity that forced her teeth to click together and her body to go rigid. Darkness curled at the edges of her vision, and as she fell, the reflection of the neon lights rose up to greet her.


End file.
